more box-card etegami-collages

etegami sheep leaping on a card cut from a cookie box

etegami sea turtle swimming on a card cut from a rice cracker box

The Box-Card Etegami-Collage Challenge closed at the end of October, but it was such a fun project, and I still have plenty of product boxes that can be made into cards, so I keep making more. You can see some of my etegami-collages along the right sidebar of the challenge blog.

the harvest moon

Fox and the Harvest Moon. Hand-painted Etegami fox glued to a card cut from the cover of a gift box of Japanese sweets.

new etegami call-- box card art

I don't think I've instigated an etegami call since I retired the Etegami Fun Club Newsletter. And it's high time I did. The challenge this time will be to use gift boxes, commercial product boxes, or product wrappers to make an etegami collage of some kind.  If you can recall my last post, I confess it was in preparation for this etegami call.

Your submission should combine a product box with a handpainted etegami image in the simplest way possible. If there are sensible words already on the box, you don't need to add your own. But if you can add your own words without turning the etegami-collage into a big mess, please do.

Here are the requirements of the call:

1. Your submission to this call should be a physical etegami, not digital. For this call, it should be sent in an envelope through the postal service to the following address:

dosankodebbie's mailart gallery
Hiragishi 2-11-1-22, Toyohira-ku,
Sapporo, 062-0932, JAPAN

2. The submissions should be approximately 15 cm x 10 cm (6 inches x 4 inches) in size.

3. The deadline for sending submissions to this call is October 31, 2014.

4. DON'T FORGET THAT THERE MUST BE AN ETEGAMI ELEMENT= A HAND-PAINTED IMAGE SOMEWHERE ON THE COLLAGE, AND PREFERABLE SOME HAND-WRITTEN WORDS, ALTHOUGH THE WORDS THAT ARE ALREADY PRINTED ON THE CARD MAY BE CONSIDERED SUFFICIENT.

Update: As the submissions come in, I will post them on a new blog I set up just for this challenge. Later in the year, or early next year, I hope to find a more public, real-life venue to display them. Please click this link to see the growing collection of box-card etegami-collages. They are a lot of fun, and everyone has been so creative!

etegami made from gift boxes

etegami bee on a candy box card

Japan has two gift-giving seasons, one in the summer and one in the winter. But that's just the tip of the iceberg of the myriad occasions on which social rules require the giving of gifts. Proper etiquette also requires a response from the receiver, in some cases a return gift of 1/3 to 1/2 the value of the original gift! The customs differ from region to region, and in these days when company employees and civil servants are being transferred frequently from one area of Japan to another, the rules of gift-giving-and-returning can be very confusing even for a native Japanese. I don't worry much about rules, but I do make it a habit (from the heart) to send hand-painted etegami in response to every gift I receive, and sometimes even in place of a gift that might be expected from me if people didn't already assume I was ignorant of such customs.

Many years ago,  a woman in my etegami group showed me a thank-you card she had received from a woman to whom she had sent a box of sweet melons. The woman had simply cut a postcard-sized chunk from the cardboard box the melons had been packed in, being careful to cut it from a part of the box printed with an image of a melon. Then she wrote "thank you" with a permanent black marker, addressed it, stuck a postage stamp on it, and mailed it to my friend. It was simple, it was creative and considerate, and most important of all, my friend was utterly delighted with it. This was my introduction to etegami made from gift boxes.

Since then, whenever possible, I make my thank-you cards from the boxes that the gifts are packaged in. Especially if they are pretty boxes, or printed with a brand logo that is prized all over Japan. Fortunately, there are a lot of pretty boxes in Japan, and I never have a shortage of material for making box cards.

My own personal rule is to add an etegami element to every box card. To the flowery box card (top) that I cut out of a box from a famous Hokkaido candy company, I added a bee that I had painted on a washi card, then cut out and glued to the box card. I glued an etegami shrimp to the light brown card embossed in gold letters with the name of a famous shrimp cracker maker in Nagoya. To the red card that I cut from the box of a well-known Chinese dumpling maker in Tokyo, I added an etegami dragon. Each of these cards were made for the giver of the treats that came in those boxes.

etegami shrimp on a shrimp crackers box card

etegami dragon on a chinese dumpling box card

Because these box cards already have printing on them, I chose not to add any words of my own. The message of delighted gratitude that I want to convey is clear enough, I think.  But if there is enough open space so as not to make the card too cluttered, I might add a quote or words of my own. Like the cookie box card below, to which I added an etegami albatross and a Robert Frost quote. The body of the albatross is placed right over the cookie brand name because I wanted a clean "canvas" to write words of my own. I think I should have spread the writing further to the left and right side of the card. But I need to remind myself of the etegami motto: "Awkward is okay; in fact Awkward is great!"

etegami albatross on a cookie box card

when you can't paint, what do you do?

My eyes have been too strained lately to paint new etegami. But "I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, miles to go before I sleep." (Robert Frost, for those who don't know.) 

So here is what I do when I can't paint: I cut out pretty cards from boxes that various foodstuffs come in. In fact, I never throw away cereal boxes or cookie boxes or tea boxes or bird seed boxes or curry roux boxes (you name the box) without first cutting out postcard-sized pieces of the most interesting or colorful parts of the box. I keep these on hand for all sorts of uses. Like for writing thank-you notes to include with the orders I ship to my Etsy customers. 

Monday is the day I reserve for sending etegami to shut-ins and people in the hospital or nursing homes. Today, I picked the salmon eggs card for my father, who spent nearly his entire adult life in Japan, but now lives in a nursing home in the US. The cereal box card with raspberries are for a sweet Japanese lady in a nursing home in Japan. The handwritten words on the raspberry card say "Trying very hard to remember the smell of summer."